Strict Pólya-Szegő inequalities for general functionals of the gradient (Q931269)

The authors present a brief note announcing some of the results of their paper to appear in SIAM J. Math. Anal. Let \(\mathcal M^+_0(\mathbb R^N)\) denote the class of nonnegative functions \(f\in L^1(\mathbb R^N)\) such that the set \(\{x\in \mathbb R^N:f(x)>0\}\) has a finite \(N\)-dimensional Lebesgue measure. A functional \(\Phi:\mathcal M^+_0(\mathbb R^N)\to[0,\infty]\) is called \(**\)-increasing if \(\Phi(f)\leq\Phi(g)\) whenever \(f^{**}(s)\leq g^{**}(s)\) for all \(s>0\). Here \(f^{**}(s)=s^{-1}\int^s_0f^*(r)dr\) and \(f^*\) is the decreasing rearrangement of \(f\). The main theorem complements the result by \textit{J. E. Brothers} and \textit{W. P. Ziemer} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 384, 153--179 (1988; Zbl 0633.46030)] stating that given a \(**\)-increasing functional \(\Phi:\mathcal M^+_0(\mathbb R^N)\to[0,\infty]\) then any function \(u\) from the Sobolev space \(W^1_+(\mathbb R^N)\) such that \(\Phi(|\nabla u^*|)=\Phi(|\nabla u|)<\infty\) and such the set \(\{x\in\mathbb R^N:\nabla u=0,\;0<u(x)<\operatorname{ess\,sup } u \}\) has zero Lebesgue measure, is spherically symmetric and satisfies \(u=u^*\) almost everywhere in \(\mathbb R^N\) (up to translations).